Review - Stardust

As you may have noticed by the addition of indentations in my paragraphs, you are reading the blog entry of a new man. The Eric you once knew is no more. Gone are the slanderous comments and oafish defamations of a pitiful little man whose verbal venom was merely a transparent smoke-screen to shield his own inability to achieve success as a filmmaker. Perhaps it was my inattentive parents or a sour high school relationship that I was never able to let go, but something caused me to transform into the bitter misanthrope I am, content to tearing down what others have poured their heart into. But a week-long crash course of transcendental meditation, group therapy, and herbal remedies have led me to realize the error of my ways. And I shall illustrate this by today's review.
Hey, fantasy queers! Do you like movies that have a sense of wonder? Do you like movies where everybody wears powdered wigs and the main plot always concerns some sort of magical jewel or artifact? Even better, do you like unicorns? Were you one of those pitiful closet-cases in high school who found solace from your daily beatings in Dungeons and Dragons. Did you occasionally get carried away and envision yourself riding a magical unicorn through green pastures accompanied by fairies and magical nymphs? Then did you wake up and realize you were on top of your family dog and those fairies were just flies that were attracted by the smell of your own filth? Well, have I got a movie for you! Put on your wings, gaze into your ancient scepter and go see Stardust! The movie where everything is covered in unicorn semen!
Okay, okay, serious this time. Despite all my knee-jerk reactions to these type of films, I actually caught myself being fairly entertained. I came in the theater (about five minutes late) with the best expectations. It occurred to me that this could be a film reminiscent of such 80s semi-classic fantasies like Labyrinth, Legend or The Neverending Story. I was pretty much in retro-mode for this viewing experience. In addition to the retro factor, for some bizarre and repulsive reason, I was intrigued because I was under the impression that this was a unicorn movie. I must be getting soft in my old age if I'm willing to view a film based on the possibility of seeing a white horse with a cheap plastic horn glued to its forehead. Well, let me clear the air by saying that this is NOT a unicorn movie. There is indeed a unicorn but it only has two appearances, and while they are great scenes, it's not enough to label Stardust as a unicorn movie. But despite my disappointment at the lack of unicorns, I still found Stardust to be a well-made, well-acted fantasy movie with good characters and a good sense of humor.
The story almost plays out like a gangster-caper movie, in that there's a large ensemble cast who are trying to claim possession of some coveted item for various reasons. Our main hero, Tristan (Charlie Cox) wants to claim a falling star as a way to claim his love for Victoria (Sienna Miller). What he didn't expect is that stars are actually shaped quite a bit like humans, in this case shaped like Claire Danes. After some bickering and convincing, Yvaine, the star, agrees to come with Tristan in exchange for his help to get back in the sky. Unfortunately, also after Yvaine are a trio of witches who would love nothing more than to eat her heart for eternal youth and beauty, led by Lamia (Michelle Pfeiffer, in various stages of beautiful and monstrously fugly). Also on the warpath for the falling star are a group of spoiled rotten princes (Mark Strong, Jason Flemyng, and Mark Heap) who need to retrieve the jeweled necklace that their dad (a less than foppy Peter O'Toole) launched into the sky, causing Yvaine to fall in the first place. So what follows is an odyssey involving all sorts of crazy characters, including Robert DeNiro as a not so grizzled sky pirate. Yes, I said sky pirate. A pirate in the sky. And be sure not to blink or else you'll miss the unicorn. It's supposed to be a movie for all ages, so as you can guess things turn out just fine in the end.
All in all, I thought Stardust was a solid fantasy film. The plot and characters were quite excellent and it had that whimsy as hell charm I remember from the movies I liked as a kid. My criticisms are that the outcome was quite predictable, the filmmakers went a tad overboard on the special effects, and for a family film there was a rather large body count. But all in all, I was very entertained and am now curious to see Vaughn's other film Layer Cake, which I had missed but heard good things about. Apparently he's attached to direct a film version of Marvel's Thor. If Stardust is any indication, he's just the man for the job.